MSD’s Victrelis Photo Booth at GUT 2012

I spent last Saturday over at Holiday Inn Melaka for a day’s photo booth shoot for MSD during the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Malaysian Society of Gastroenterology & Hepatology (GUT 2012). They have just launched a new product named Victrelis. Following a similar experience and work I did for GSK Malaysia’s launch of Duodart, I was engaged to provide a similar service.

For your quick info, Victrelis is a prescription medicine used with the medicines peginterferon alfa and ribavirin (peg/riba) to treat chronic (long-lasting) hepatitis C genotype 1 infection in adults with stable liver problems who have not been treated before or who have failed previous treatment.

Unlike GSK’s Duodart event in Shangri-La where picture framing of delegates was quite fluid and flexible, as long as a portion of the background board was captured, this time calls for the delegates to just place their head through a small hole. The photo board depicted a fencer confidently at ease.

In this simple setup, I used a small soft box to high camera right and only later added a second gridded strobe to bring out detail in the red gradient area. This would enable the resulting prints to shout out some red. The above two pictures were without this second gridded strobe in use.

With the camera locked down on a tripod and zoomed at 50mm, I shot tethered at f/8, 1/200 sec @ ISO 100. Nothing fancy here. Unfortunately, due to this fixed position meant for just a frame-filling fencer, shooting for a group proved to be a problem.

I had no choice but to have the subject’s hands/shoulders cropped. I could not zoom out lest I would include the surrounding ambient distractions. If I did, I will then have to zoom back in and readjust my settings to cater for a single frame-filling delegate/fencer shot. Hence, I just left the camera zoomed at an optimum frame-filling single person shot.

In addition to that, a group picture would have resulted in unsightly cropped lower limbs (i.e. knees/ankles). Plus, the camera left side of their faces would have been too dark without fill in some group arrangements (couldn’t setup a fill board as it would have obstructed traffic). Nevertheless, I don’t suppose it was polite to turn down a group shot request. Always prepare for the worst, and hope for the best!

Once the pictures were taken, I had them printed on A4-sized 173 g/m2 Kodak glossy paper, cut to perfection and left to be collected by the delegates, all within a span of no more than 10 minutes ideally for two prints (single A4). The speed with which I worked depended on the crowd as well.